[emcarey]

chief diversity officers will make a corporation more diverse - that is their job. companies that do PR around their diversity are not doing it right - D&I is an industry competitive advantage. The most diverse organizations in the Fortune 1000 outperform their industry median financial returns by 35%. I agree the 'covert' manner works but the role of chief diversity officers is critical to the macroeconomic impact of globalizing and increasing market representation in our modern workforces.

[mankash666]

Correlation isn't causation. I'm not saying that diversity is bad, but if the most diverse of the fortune 500 did outperform others, diversity as a direct cause of this is what I'd like to see evidence of. Many other factors might have contributed to their better performance, one could attribute one of those to be the cause?

[T2_t2]

Even further to that, what do these companies DO. I doubt that BHP Billiton - or many petro-chemical companies - have a lot of diversity. I bet Wallmart does - especially minority hires.

And what even is diversity? Google employs a lot of Indians - both in India and the USA - and that helps diversity along all lines - racial, gender as India doesn't have the same gender tech bias as the west. Is that AMERICAN diversity? Using BS numbers, if US born employees are 90-10 men to women, but overall it is 70-30, then the best means of increasing diversity could be more foreign hires. Does that benefit who people are hoping it does?

I'm not for or against any position here, it is just that the history of measures like this is to use euphemistic "statistics", aka "lying with numbers". If companies can find a way to manipulate the numbers - consultants instead of employees, inhousing female dominated positions etc - then this will be easily doable. In fact, I think I might start a consultancy in just that :)

[scooble]

I find it more plausible that a diverse workforce and market success are both effects of a good company culture, good hiring practices etc. than suggesting that diversity somehow causes success.

Not least because seeing diversity as a causal factor seems to imply that a person's skillset is somehow linked to their gender/race (or whichever diversity criteria is in play), and hence that a diverse workforce leads to a broader skillset.

[gaius]

I think it is curious that CDOs exist as distinct from the Head of HR position. How does that work on the org chart, are they peers or who reports to who?

[calculusftw]

Chief Diversity Officers (CDO) might make corporations superficially diverse, in a purely demographic sense.

But I'd argue that it's not so easy to make a company truly diverse--in the sense that people are friendly (or at least congenial on a professional level), equally respectful of each other, and able to hold and tolerate varying/conflicting perspectives without respectfully, without animosity.

That makes for a truly enjoyable place to work, if you can find a company with such a culture. But it's much more rare than one might hope. It's just not human nature to treat each other that well, in general, by default.

In my (admittedly limited) experience, it takes truly gifted/talented/experienced leaders, and they must cultivate a culture like that from the top down. It just isn't likely to evolve organically, without guidance.

Sad, but true, I think.

Anyway, companies that do succeed in that regard tend to be extraordinarily successful.

I once had a really incredibly great boss. He went to Georgetown, was very sharp and was an exceedingly shrewd business tactician, so that certainly helped. But this company succeeded in a way that seemed so effortless, in comparison with other less pleasant places I've worked.

It was a team effort; we had several developers who were very good at their jobs, so I certainly wouldn't attribute our success to anyone person. But I do really believe the way this guy treated us and motivated us the critical factor.